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Rutan
Voyager

Voyager
aircraft return from its round-the-world flight.

Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager embody
the very spirit and character of the word "pioneers." In December
1986, they became the first people to circumnavigate the world,
non-stop, without refuelling their plane, the Voyager. They also
set world flight records in the process. Besides being the first
team to travel non-stop around the globe--which was one of
aviation's last record barriers--Rutan and Yeager also endured the
longest flight to that date, and almost doubled the then current
distance flight record. But their contributions did not stop
there. They also explored the limits of human endurance and mental
fatigue during their journey. To many, Rutan and Yeager's flight
represented the triumph of human ingenuity as the two aviators
overcame a wide range of aerodynamic, financial, physical, and
psychological challenges.

Richard "Dick" Rutan was born in Loma Linda, California, on July 1,
1938. An eager individual, Rutan earned both his pilot's and
driver's licenses on his 16th birthday. At the age of 19 he joined
the Air Force Aviation Cadet Program and was later commissioned a
lieutenant in the Air Force. He flew 325 missions over Southeast
Asia during the Vietnam War until September 1968, when his F-100
plane sustained a hit from enemy fire and he had to eject from his
aircraft. He evaded capture and was rescued by American forces. Due
to his exemplary military record, Rutan received the Silver Star,
five Distinguished Flying Crosses, 16 Air Medals, and a Purple
Heart.

The second Voyager pilot Jeana Yeager was born in Fort Worth, Texas,
on May 18, 1952. By 1978, she had earned her pilot's license. During
her early aviation career, Yeager mainly wanted to learn to fly
helicopters, but her interests branched off and she turned her
attention to high-performance aircraft. Yeager, who is no relation
to the famous test pilot Chuck Yeager, first met Dick Rutan, and his
brother Burt, at a California air show in 1980. At the time, Burt
and Dick ran their own aircraft company. Interestingly, Yeager set
four separate speed records in Rutan EZ planes in the early 1980s.

The Rutans originally conceived of the Voyager during a lunch in
1981. They believed that they could design a plane that could break
the world distance record of 12,532 miles (20,168 kilometres) set by
a B-52 Air Force crew in 1962. Like many great innovators, they
quickly sketched their ideas onto a napkin while still at the lunch
table. With the help of an eager group of volunteers, they began
building the Voyager the next year. Notably, the entire project
relied solely on private funds and donations.

The creation of the Voyager posed several design challenges for the
Rutans. Burt, the main project engineer, searched for just the right
combination of materials to make the aircraft light enough to reach
maximum efficiency and yet strong enough to sustain extremely
long-distance flight. He also had to devise a way for the aircraft
to hold the enormous amount of fuel necessary to power it, non-stop,
around the globe. Eventually the Rutans decided to construct the
Voyager's main structure/fuselage out of a space age composite
material consisting mainly of graphite, Kevlar, and fibreglass. The
structural weight of Voyager was only about 939 pounds (426
kilograms), but when its 17 fuel tanks were full, its takeoff weight
exceeded 9,700 pounds (4,400 kilograms), or more than 10 times its
structural weight. Voyager's wingspan was approximately 110 feet (36
meters). By the time the Voyager made its first test flight on June
22, 1984, the Rutans, Yeager, and scores of volunteers had spent
more than 18 months and 22,000 hours working on the aircraft. After
more than a year-and-a-half of testing and modifications on Voyager,
Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager were ready to attempt their
record-setting flight.

Rutan, Yeager, and Voyager took off from Edwards Air Force Base,
California, at 8:01 a.m. on December 14, 1986. The plane needed
almost the entire 15,000 feet (4,572 meters) of runway, which was
already one of the world's longest airstrips, to become airborne;
the aircraft did not lift off until it was approximately 14,200 feet
(4,328 meters) down the runway, and then it did so only after
sustaining a bit of damage. Due to the large amount of fuel
contained in Voyager's wing tanks, the aircraft's wings bobbed up
and down while accelerating down the runway, and in the process,
about a foot of each wing tip chipped off. Concerned about the
condition of their craft, Rutan and Yeager circled the airfield and
checked their plane's handling conditions. Fortunately, the plane
seemed sound enough to continue the journey.

Yeager and Rutan had to endure severe physical and mental demands
during their trip. Because of the time required to make a
circum-navigational flight, they became extremely fatigued. To
combat the problem, they tried to rotate their duties. One
crewmember would fly the aircraft, while the other rested.
Initially, they tried to work in two-to-three-hour shifts, but
things did not always go according to plan. Furthermore, it was
extremely difficult to manoeuvre themselves into a comfortable
sleeping position, particularly within the confines of Voyager's
small cockpit, which was only the size of a phone booth.

The two aviators faced several dangers during their flight. One of
their greatest challenges was bad weather. At several points during
their trip, they had to evade menacing storm fronts. Once, they even
had to fly around Typhoon Marge, a 600-mile (966-kilometer)-wide
storm. While such manoeuvring helped them escape physical harm, it
only added to their mental stress. Each time they had to adjust
their flight plan by climbing above a storm, or going around one,
they burned more fuel, and since Voyager had started the trip with a
very tight fuel allotment, they grew increasingly concerned that
they might not have enough to complete their journey. As it turned
out, they had enough fuel, but just barely.

Rutan and Yeager completed their journey when they touched down at
Edwards Air Force Base at 8:06 a.m. on December 23, 1986. The entire
24,986-mile trip had taken 9 days, 3 minutes, and 44 seconds, or a
little more than 216 hours. During their trip, they had averaged
around 116 miles per hour (187 kilometres per hour), and when they
landed, they only had a few gallons of fuel left.

From a record standpoint, Rutan and Yeager became the first aviators
to circumnavigate the globe non-stop, without refuelling. They also
endured the longest flight up to that time, and essentially doubled
the previous flight record for distance. Because of their
accomplishment, President Ronald Regan awarded the Rutan brothers
and Yeager with the Presidential Citizen Medals of Honour, which had
been awarded only 16 times previously. They also received the
Collier Trophy, aviation's highest honour, and several other
prestigious awards.

In
the late 1990s, Dick Rutan attempted to set another around-the-world
record, this time in a balloon. Rutan and his team-mate David Melton
began preparing for the journey when they learned that the
Anheuser-Busch Company was offering $1 million to the first team of
balloonists who could successfully circumnavigated the world,
non-stop. In 1998, Rutan and Melton set out on what they believed
would be a record-setting journey, but only three hours into their
flight, a helium cell ruptured in their balloon and they had to
abandon their trip. Another team of balloonists, sponsored by the
Breitling watch company, would beat them into the record books in
March 1999.

The Voyager now hangs in a place of honour in the "Milestones of
Flight" gallery in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum
in Washington, D.C. Its 1986 flight revealed just how far
aeronautical engineering and design had advanced during more than 80
years of aviation. Rutan and Yeager not only established a couple of
world records with the Voyager but also tested the psychological and
physiological capabilities of humans under extreme pressure. Rutan
and Yeager's flight proved that people really can live up to Rutan's
personal motto: "If you can dream it, you can do it."

Wingspan

33.8 m (110 ft. 8 in.)

Length

8.9 m (29 ft. 2 in.)

Height

3.1 m (10 ft. 3 in.)

Weight

1,020 kg (2,250 lb.) empty

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